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SETIGuy writes "Former WikiLeaks programmer Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers, according to a WikiLeaks spokesperson. Since leaving WikiLeaks, Domschiet-Berg has become one of the cofounders of OpenLeaks. This raises the question: if you had material to leak, would you trust it to someone who has already jeopardized the anonymity of leakers at a site where he worked?"
Domscheit-Berg denies claims by WikiLeaks that he damaged the organization or 'stole' material, but did say he took roughly 300,000 documents with him when he left. An anonymous reader notes related news that WikiLeaks is attempting to get around donation blocks by selling a line of T-shirts.

Now that WikiLeaks has competition, it would make sense to try and stop that competition. When you have a site like OpenLeaks that is all about anonymously leaking information, trying to say that they are not trusted with that would possibly hurt them. I think it is good there are multiple sources doing this. I don't see what WikiLeaks problem is with it. If they are truly in this to spread information to the masses, then the more sites that do it, the easier it will be for the information to get released.

I don't see what WikiLeaks problem is with it. If they are truly in this to spread information to the masses, then the more sites that do it, the easier it will be for the information to get released.

All the more evidence to suggest that eitherA) Wikileaks is right in that Domscheit-Berg sabatoged Wikileaks and they don't want you to trust himB) Wikileaks is not truly in this to spread information to the masses.

The fact that Wkileaks is making a big deal of the stolen stash of documents suggest they are NOT in this to provide information, but rather to further a specific agenda.

Forget for a moment about the irony of bickering over "ownership" of stolen documents. The fact that Wikileaks still HAS a copy of those documents means they weren't harmed.

As for the anonymous submission system being deactivated, the story seems long on allegations and short on detail. Even the alleged sabotage is only Wikileaks characterization of what is in Domscheit-Berg's book:

"In (his) book Domscheit-Berg confesses to various acts of sabotage against the organization. The former WikiLeaks staffer admits to having damaged the site's primary submission system and stolen material," Hrafnsson's statement said.

The fact that Wkileaks is making a big deal of the stolen stash of documents suggest they are NOT in this to provide information, but rather to further a specific agenda.

Forget for a moment about the irony of bickering over "ownership" of stolen documents. The fact that Wikileaks still HAS a copy of those documents means they weren't harmed.

They are in this to provide information, but part of their self-given task is also to get the information as much coverage as possible. Controlling the flow of information is part of this in their eyes.

As their relationship with their formal partners(Guardian, NYTimes, etc) deteriorate, the leaks have been released differently. Instead of trying to create the news, they latch onto existing stories and ride on their coat tails. In Egypt for example: News about Mohamed ElBaradei and Egypt would have been igno

When someone leaks some documents to Wikileaks, it's an act of trust - that they can remain anonymous, and that the documents will be carefully collated and published. If someone illicitly copies some documents from Wikileaks, it's potentially a breach of that trust. If I were Wikileaks, I'd be pissed too.

Having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity, but we cannot assume Wikileaks cares about what's good for humanity. A normal organization hides from slander, moving controversial figures away from the public spotlight and replacing them with new faces. Regardless of Wikileaks' benevolent message, it seems intent on parading Assange around as a sort of "martyr for the rebellion" figure. OpenLeaks stand to take attention away from that image, and in doing so, cut off the stream of revenue from donations.

Wikileaks hasn't acted like a normal charitable organization in quite a while. Now they're just capitalizing on controversy, and trying to make a profitable business out of it.

A normal organization hides from slander, moving controversial figures away from the public spotlight and replacing them with new faces. Regardless of Wikileaks' benevolent message, it seems intent on parading Assange around as a sort of "martyr for the rebellion" figure.

"Normal" is basically just another word for "average"...that's not the best approach regarding activities which could be, how you put it, good for humanity.

Especially if the organization could be forced into constant reorganizations just by new slander & controversy directed at every new face.

"Normal" is basically just another word for "average"...that's not the best approach regarding activities which could be, how you put it, good for humanity.Especially if the organization could be forced into constant reorganizations just by new slander & controversy directed at every new face.

You miss the point entirely.

Why should there be a "Face"?

The mission (allegedly) of Wikileaks is to establish openness of information. Putting ANY face on it simply makes it a personal vendetta mostly aimed at the

I don't particularly agree with your statement as a whole, but calling him "paranoid" is just plain bizarre. The guy has multiple world powers out to get him. It isn't that he THINKS they are out to get him, they are publicly stating that they are. Thinking that governments are out to get you when they publicly say so isn't exactly what I would call 'paranoid'.

Having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity, but we cannot assume Wikileaks cares about what's good for humanity.... OpenLeaks stand to take attention away from that image, and in doing so, cut off the stream of revenue from donations.

OpenLeaks seeks to change the one thing that makes WikiLeaks effective:Releasing the source documents.

Our media has always been only as honest as they needed to be.Without source documents being put out in the public eye, there's nothing forcing news organizations to be as honest as they should be.

How is a source document inherently better than a properly-scrubbed document? If a hypothetical leak indicates that the CIA meets North Korean arms dealers every Tuesday at 4:00 PM at the Starbucks on Main street, does it really matter that the released version says the meeting takes place on Friday at an old warehouse?

If an OpenLeaks submitter doesn't like what is finally released, they're welcome to try again with a different outlet. OpenLeaks just makes connections, and it's up to the submitter to determ

The "threat" from openleaks.org is not that they will attract attention away from wikileaks. In fact, its the opposite of what they want to do. According to Domscheit-Berg, they plan to only be a "leak collector" and move the information through existing journalism organizations for review/release.

No, the threat of openleaks is that they will take away the "good scoops" from wikileaks.

If having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity then I'm afraid Domshit-Berg doesn't agree with you as he very handily sabotaged WL before taking 300K documents and setting up his own tent across the street.

In Australia, this behaviour is colloquially referred to as a "c*nt's act".

You claim that WL hasn't acted like a "normal charitable organisation". I'm sorry? What? They are an organisation trying to change the way governments (of all flavours) deal with their citizenry - i.e. they want to make it impossible for governments to continue to operate on the basis of subterfuge on a grand scale. Capitalizing on controversy is part and parcel of making people (not just geeks) aware. Tell me, how many people on the street had even heard of WL 2 years ago, let alone were aware of the stuff they had released?

As for making a "profitable business" - give me a break. From what? Selling t-shirts? Do you have any idea how much it takes to fund a decent legal defence when multiple state actors are out to get you? I don't either but it sure as hell won't be cheap.

If having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity then I'm afraid Domshit-Berg doesn't agree with you as he very handily sabotaged WL before taking 300K documents and setting up his own tent across the street.

According to someone at WikiLeaks.

It is not unusual for a company with idiot or malicious employees to try to blame the last guy who left for all their troubles. "Oh, we weren't bad admins, it was George who left a year ago breaking in and causing trouble..."

For every one city admin who locks down the routers when he leaves there are probably 10,000 admins who are accused out of spite of hacking by ex-employers.

You don't just take leaked information and leak it to the public. The reason wikileaks doesn't do this is to protect the people who leak info. Believe it or not, they actually do this. There is no such guarantee from openleaks.

Wikileaks never said anyone else couldn't do this, just that they need to be cognizant of what it takes to anonymize stuff before it's released.

Ok I went there just now. Went to the about [wikileaks.ch] page and found... 0 references to Assange. On the front page, it has his picture as part of a banner... but amazingly nothing about the court case on Assange.

The only value though in getting the information out there is if someone sees it. Pleople know wikileaks, people watch it, if you have 100s of little leak sites out there nobody will pay any attention and your important relase may go un noticed. If you try to leak the data to multiple place you increase your expose by having to transfer sensitive data multiple times.

So while I don't think its good to have just one whistle blowing site for the whole of the WWW, to many might prove detrimental to the object

I seriously doubt Domscheit-Berg purposely infiltrated Wikileaks, but I agree with you that I don't trust him or Openleaks. Compromising the security of wikileaks contributors shows he does not respect them, and is unlikely to do so at OpenLeaks. Assange is clearly loyal to his ideals and willing to take great personal risk for them. I might not trust him with my cat, but I'd trust him with my leaked data.

Well then, you'd be a gullible, unemployed, and potentially dead fool. What makes you think the whole wikileaks system was secure in the first place? Which I believe was part of Domscheit-Berg's point. Wikileaks is not taking in new leaks, because they have to re-engineer their whole system. In other words, the original setup was suspect even before DB's "sabotage".

All I can know about him is his background is very thin, he came into Wikileaks late, he sabotaged their software before he left, he has actively participated in the campaign to discredit Assange, and his OpenLeaks site does not actually publish the materials submitted (*supposedly* they're routed directly to news sources, or maybe they're routed directly to the NSA or FBI, who knows?). That does not sound like a guy I would trust with jackshit.

OK - I've done the search and can't find a reference at all for your tag line in which JA is quoted to have said that "killing people is fun". If it was said, it wasn't reported or Google haven't indexed it - which would imply. If it wasn't said (as I suspect), then you are just making shit up to smear the guy.

FWIW, the search string I used was:+"julian assange" +"killing people is fun"

Now that WikiLeaks has competition, it would make sense to try and stop that competition. When you have a site like OpenLeaks that is all about anonymously leaking information, trying to say that they are not trusted with that would possibly hurt them. I think it is good there are multiple sources doing this. I don't see what WikiLeaks problem is with it. If they are truly in this to spread information to the masses, then the more sites that do it, the easier it will be for the information to get released.

So far the publicly available formula for Wikileaks has been:1. Accept stolen documents2. Put them on the web for people to download.3.?4. Profit!

Maybe #3 really isn't a blank, and competition from other sites would endanger it unless they coordinated what documents to make available, and when.

We know from leaked emails that security companies hired by Bank of America and working with the FBI explicitly had the following plan to destroy wikileaks: Turn wikileaks insiders against each other, and spread FUD to dissuade people from trusting wikileaks as both a source of information, and as a safe haven to give information to.

Fast forward six months after those emails, and we have: Wikileaks insiders fighting against each other, splitting off due to distrust, and spreading information about a co

"Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt,"
"Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat's throat."

There are limits, and an ex associate of Assange's claims he broke those limits. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, we don't know. How do we know Assange is the wingnut, and not Domscheit-Berg? It's pretty clear that at least one of them is a monomaniacal loon, if not both.

I thought the word was intentionally placed there - it sounds nice as people/expect/ to accuse him of megalomania but the problem (if any) may be monomania, causing him to disregard the effect on people (and animals?) around him. Like Churchill said, a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

This all remains drama bullshit to detract from the actual purpose of Wikileaks to release pertinent information on misbehaviour. Disliking Assange and his seconds in command doesn't m

Good point, but people like their myths in black and white, thank you very much, we'll have no shades of gray here. If someone is a hero, they must be all hero, and if a villain, they must be pure evil. Anything else just confuses people. They just want to know whether they should love or hate someone.

1) Domsheit-Berg took the documents and deleted the copies out of spite, Wikileaks stole nothing, they received the documents with the higher objective of exposing corruption and wrong-doings. Morally and legally their actions are very different. Wikileaks actions are legally indistinguishable from news organizations, and they have yet to be convicted of a crime. There is plenty of precedent that taking documents from a former employer with the intent to harm them IS a crime.2) Betraying the whistle-blowers

So first, Wikileaks is a great boon to democracy, then it's a threat to security, then it's the victim of a multi-government conspiracy, then it's the noble banner over coordinated multinational attacks, and now it's the victim of sabotage, and perpetrator of its own slander campaign!

I don't think you get it. Everyone in America fails "US Gov't" even when they get a passing grade. They didn't have a "civics" class when I was in high school. Classes are basically ground up, spoon fed propaganda. You spout slogans, you are not taught what they mean.

And I don't see the point of being an AC over such innocuous, uncontroversial comments.

I don't know whether it's a big deal or not, but from reading the article it is more than just about documents from Wikileaks being leaked to another site. This Domschiet-Berg guy did something that compromised the anonymity of people who submit things to the Wikileaks website.

While I wholeheartedly support free speech, "it must be true because it is on wikileaks" is as worrisome as efforts to quell free speech. Would it be too much trouble to get an independent eye to validate the charge before making an accusation?

So WikiLeaks is angry that their former member stole 300,000 documents, and plans on leaking them to the world? That's the finest example of irony I've heard all week.

It's also the finest example of organizational inertia I've encountered for a while, where an entity is created to further some basic principle, but slowly mutates into something more interested in its own survival and aggrandizement.

As I understand it, WikiLeaks' submission system used to be full of holes. Some guy ("the architect") took it upon himself to fix it. Then Assange went on an ego-trip and Domscheit-Berg left, and the architect joined him and founded OpenLeaks with him. And yes, took his code with him.

Maybe Assange should have realised a bit earlier that he doesn't run WikiLeaks on his own. WikiLeaks depends on a lot of people, and if he kicks them out, the organisation crumbles.

By the way, WikiLeaks is also suing Domscheit-Berg over a number of documents that Domscheit-Berg has been trying to give to Assange for quite some time now, but Assange keeps ignoring him. At least, that's what my newspaper said about it.

Assange understands that he needs volunteers and teamwork in order for wikileaks to run. He has no problem with that, as long as everyone understands he is the "Great Leader", he gets all the attention, everything he decrees goes, and everyone working for wikileaks makes sure his ass is licked clean every day. What problem? Its only these troublemaking saboteurs like Domscheit-Berg who must be silenced.

Wikileaks doesn't care about who copies the documents, they are angry because he sabotaged their submission system.

In the absence of evidence of a copyright assignment, a license agreement, or an employer-employee relationship, I'm not going to agree with the assumption that it is their submission system.

It sounds to me like the programmer who wrote the system decided to take his ball and go home. If he owned it, that is more or less his right. Considering that Wikileaks didn't even register as a legal e

They should be thankful for the help; aren't they always bitching about lack of manpower? After all, if you really care about releasing the information responsibly (like they do, Pentagon lies aside), rather than just publicity, wouldn't you be glad for 300,000 items off your to-do list? I would.

Wasn't the American government consulting to find a way to discredit Assange and Wikileaks? Didn't defense contractors and Bank of America work together with Palantir Technologies, and Berico Technologies to discredit Wikileaks?

I can't wait till all the bank info comes out, I got a nice long section of hemp rope I've been saving.

The more I pay attention to all the news surrounding wikileaks the more I realize that the only people who get air time anymore are drama queens. On the one side, we have Assange acting like a pissed off idealistic teenager (not necessarily a bad thing) making comments about how it is his duty to end two wars in the world. In another corner, we have the dumbshit media pundits in America calling for his head on a platter without even having a crime to charge him for. Then there is the Swedish legal system, which is dumping money and time into investigating rape charges that are spurious at best, but more like a downright "he says she says" game from prom night. Then there are all the other wikileaks employees, or volunteers, or whatever, that have to compete with Assange's ego, like this guy who swiped a bunch of data and intends to use it to start his own project ("I don't like your secret club anymore! I'm starting my own!")

Hell, the only folk who seem to act rationally when it comes to this issue are the folks in the Middle East that read a few cables relevant to their lives and said, "Fuck it, it's time to change things for the better!"

I mean, seriously, look at this shitfest. This is something straight out of Freddy Prinze Junior movie, complete with all of the hyperbolic, dramatic characters. And yet, these are the people delivering our news, getting voted into the leadership roles of our society, and generally steering the direction this world moves in.

What The Fuck? Why do we tolerate this kind of bullshit? Maybe I am just clinging to a pipe dream, hoping to one day see our world led by people with some god damned sense and humility, but this has gotten ridiculous.

I don't know. Maybe there are some other countries out there where these issues are less glaring (or nonexistant?), but here in the States, I am afraid we've turned world politics into a fucking high school based reality T.V. show. It makes me nauseous. Maybe we really should just vote the retard beauty queen Sarah Palin into office already and get it all over with.

Well, people with a sense of humility probably don't start a lot of things like Wikileaks. I mean, it's the hell of a bold move, with the implicit statement "I know what's wrong with the world (lack of transparency) and I will do something about it". It's not very humble.

The problem I have with OpenLeaks is that, as far as I can tell, they don't make information public. You leak them info, and put yourself at risk for doing it, and then they just give it to journalists. This process is not unambiguously indicated to be free. They do not guarantee an audience for your information. They don't make the information publicly available. They expect us to trust journalists to go through this information and report what we plebes need to know about it. The problem being of course that even with the Wikileaks documents received by the NYT, the journalists worked with the gov't to decide what they would report. Luckily though, WL lets us all see the original material, we need not trust the journalist more than we care to since we have access to the same information they do. OpenLeaks would not allow that. So I guess if you're going to risk your life or your livelyhood to leak information, you'd probably not want to give it to someone who can't guarantee that the information will be available to people.
So in the process this guy sabotaged, and likely stole, anonymous submission software from his competitor before going out and starting his own business. Which he seemingly did because he didn't like Assange. Assange being mean or asinine is a red-herring meant to deceive you.

Well, any such guarantee would be a double edged sword at best, so far as the security of the source is concerned. If you can get a trustworthy journalist to stand between the public and the source material, you as a leaker are much safer from identification and retaliation. The reporter has both an ethical and a selfish interest in protecting his sources, and should have some knowledge about how to do that.

Any documents this guy may have taken and whether he sabotaged Wikileaks' servers are of course entir

For "desirable" effect, the information supplied needs to be vetted (for veracity), and presented in a manner that does NOT burn the whistleblower, or create unintended victims by release of the information. You don't achieve that with a bunch of UNPAID volunteers, of wildly varying competence, and no way of providing quality control OR security. Its INEVITABLE you're going to need news media organizations to provide those functions.

There is nothing in the openleaks model that indicates it will EXCLUSIVE

Slashdot Editors:
Please refrain from placing direct links to Wikileaks in your articles (or at least please mark them with a follow on disclaimer) in consideration to members of our armed forces who are prohibited from visiting the website [usmc.mil].

Domschiet-Berg means Cathedralshit-Mountain. His name is Domscheit-Berg.

"Former WikiLeaks programmer"

--- he was a German spokes person, an one other Wikileaks guy working closely with Assange, he didn't claim to be a programmer.

"Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers,"

-- A colleague of Daniel who also left wikileaks disabled the submission tool because they had security concerns over the submission system and found it irresponsible. The claim that he threatened the anonymity of leakers or sabotaged wikileaks is without any evidence.

"Since leaving WikiLeaks, Domschiet-Berg has become one of the cofounders of OpenLeaks. This raises the question: if you had material to leak, would you trust it to someone who has already jeopardized the anonymity of leakers at a site where he worked?"

-- Obviously he has not done this and you cannot name a single case where he did. You cannot confirm your allegation by referring to your former mentioning of the statement. It works for FOX news but not for educated discourse.

Domscheit-Berg also never said he would use them in his openleaks project.

1) Of course WikiLeaks is pissed. They were the ones who took up the banner for having a reliable place to leak data. I am sure they had some sort of process to gauge people's reliability and willingness to be part of WikiLeaks before they "hired" anyone to be part of the organization. It was a matter of trust. Which Daniel Domscheit-Berg has violated and betrayed. The only way a leak operation like WikiLeaks can work right is if it's members see beyond their own issues. So he didn't like Julian Assange? Really? Huge news? What employee ever likes their boss?

2) The irresponsibility of Daniel Domscheit-Berg for trying to make a name off WikiLeaks and Assange is sad at best, and dangerous for people at worst. Specifically for the leakers. WikiLeaks is already a known, trusted organization for handling leaked information. The new OpenLeaks crap and Daniel Domscheit-Berg are only going to confuse this very NEW process (leaked information over the internet to a central source). Having more than 1 organization right now isn't good timing. It is only a publicity stunt that is meant to harm wikileaks credibility and to confuse their leakers into trying OpenLeaks.

3) If OpenLeaks had opened by itself without any connections to WikiLeaks, then maybe it would have been ok. But for it to open the way it did, I can't see it ever being as trustworthy or "open" as WikiLeaks.

4) Those claiming that it is all theatrics are right, on the part of OpenLeaks and Daniel Domscheit-Berg making a scene merely for the sake of attracting attention away from WikiLeaks. It is literally like walking into a crowded movie theater and screaming "Quick! Look over here! Don't pay attention to the movie you were all already enjoying! We've written a play for you all to watch instead!"

5) Rather than pushing forward and just shutting up for the good of the world (or rather, the good of the people of the world who live under governments that use secrecy and shady deals to accomplish their goals) Daniel Domscheit-Berg decided it was a better idea to gather as much media attention as possible, steal from and disrupt the image of WikiLeaks, while conveniently writing books [amazon.com] that make him $, which I'm sure won't be funneled into helping people expose leaks and rather funneled into his own pocket. If that doesn't make people realize he is a douche, I don't know what will

6) People who claim, such as Daniel, that Assange's ego blah blah blah are bad are missing the point. Assange's job was to draw the ire of the governments they were leaking about. He is the media spokesperson, and the figure head. Regardless if he started WikiLeaks or not, that was his role and he has played everyone like a fiddle when it comes to this. Granted his liberties and freedom are on trial right now in Europe, but he had to of known that might be the repercussions.

The problem is that Assange is not the figurehead. He's autocratically calling the shots for what supposed to be a volunteer group effort. He's the one who's releasing tons of unedited Afghanistan war logs potentially jeopardizing the lives of Afghani "collaborators" with the US military. Assange didn't put that to a vote.

Some people believe an autocratic cult is a good thing, with the right dictator on top. I'll take a pass.

c) Assange assumed that everybody works for WL, but left the modalities of influence or money completely undefined.

Domscheidt-Berg was "suspended" (from what exactly, if i may ask if there is no organizational structure behind?) and he decided to keep the hardware with the information in his possession (where it was) until wikileaks can give him convincing instructions what to do. Since there is no organization the ownership of the servers in unclear, and he askes Wikileaks to settle it with the foundation which collaborated with them to return the servers.

Endangering of the infromers was due to Assanges unwillingness to restrict themself in a meaningful and planned way and due to his promis to the newapapers to redact the documents, a task far beyond WLs capacities at that time, and DB claims he warned of that ans got increasingly frustrated with not having a organization structure behind.

DB describes the personality structure of Assange consistently with the other persons who have met Assange personally and gave interviews.

If you would ask me to hand over a server with unclear ownership containing critical information into the hands of some person coming in a due to circumstances strongly fluctuating non-organization based on the need and the evaluation of a self-proclaimed leader with a personality structure which for sure is prone to the usual tricks used during infiltration, at a time when this leader is under big stress and may be even more leaning towards no fully rational decisions, i would seriously *not* transfer that.

So while some personal connotations of the whole story may be irritating, i can follow DBs thoughts and arguments.

To put it in a nice way: Assange is somewhere on the line between madman and genius; i would say he is a case for a therapy (a mild ambulant one) to fight the problems he seems to causing constantly in personal interactions and his Hybris.

A movement grows very fast and becomes powerful. It is run by an eccentric ego with delusions of grandeur and possible sexual proclivity. Then it collapses on itself from infighting and external pressure. This is not to say the goals of Wikileaks are bad, but its execution may have fallen short.

Two posts from different sides of the same story make for interesting reading. I believe the truth will be somewhere in the middle. It does make me wonder, however, if D-B was really not involved in any part of Wikileaks like the article from the Wikileak's spokesperson claims, it would have been difficult to remove the key piece of software that they claim he did and therefore sabatoged Wikileaks. It seems, from reading between the lines that D-B was actually much more involved in Wikileaks and since his characterizations of Assange have been corroborated by other ex-Wikileaks staff, there may very well be some truth to his side of the story.

Personally, I like the idea of having a leak repository and other outlets decide what to release or not. Putting editorial control under the caretaker of the source documents (as in Wikileaks) seems to allow for quite a bit of abuse of power.

It has been said that information is power. Wikileaks and Assange have accumulated quite a bit of information/power. Too bad, it has also been said that power corrupts.

Well the risk of leaking the names of contributors would be the right-wing nutcases in our government who want those people executed for treason. If a contributor even has a hint that their name might get out there they are more likely to shut up completely.

Yes, that's right, it's only right wing nutcases like John Kerry, Diane Feinstein, and Clair McCaskill who believe that an organization like WIkileaks is a danger. And let's not forget Atty General Eric Holder, appointed by President Obama, who is expending a great deal of effort to build a case against Assange and Wikileaks.

My god, it's just a bunch of neocons after him, it MUST be a right-wing conspiracy!

First: Your point assumes that only right-wing nutcases are capable of killing people in return for revealing some secret that is damaging or embarrassing to someone in power. This is demonstrably false, as even a cursory examination of history will show.

Second: You assume that the only people a leaker would have to fear are right-wing people, as if liberals and left-wingers never have secrets they want to keep that others might want to know about. This too is demonstrably false, as even a cursory exami

You still seem to be missing my point (even with all that verbiage). Maximum penalty CAN be death penalty or it can be a life sentence. You are right - the republican from Michigan doesn't make the ultimate decision but you can't argue that the right wants death pretty much without a trial and the left wants a trial which may end in life imprisonment.

And personally I prefer life imprisonment because you never know what future president might come along and pardon you.

No, your original comment was this: "Well the risk of leaking the names of contributors would be the right-wing nutcases in our government who want those people executed for treason. If a contributor even has a hint that their name might get out there they are more likely to shut up completely." -- in essence, that the "right wing" would deter contributors if leakers' anonymity wasn't guaranteed properly.

If you don't think that "life in prison, no parole" would be a pretty fucking effective deterrent to le

I don't think you're really reading what Jeremiah is saying. This guy admits to removing a component guaranteeing the anonymity of leakers. On top of that, he's taken with him backlogged (read: not yet published) leaked documents. Assange's alleged wrongdoing has nothing to do with the functionality and business model of the site/company.

Now, strangely, if this guy was a programmer and the component was software, all they would need to do is go to their SCR and put the code back in.. and possibly some da

Domscheit-Berg has also said the whole point of Wikileaks was supposed to be transparency and leaking of documents. Under Assange, a lot of stuff seems to sit on a shelf without being released. Wikileaks itself has no transparency, so no one knows why certain things get leaked whiles others aren't. Domscheit-Berg said he didn't approve of Assange's direction and wants to continue the concept of leaking documents under new management.

Wikileaks supporters supposedly want more transparency and more leaks. Shou

People keep suggesting that anyone who speaks out against Assange or Wikileaks must be pawns of the CIA. Logically that doesn't hold nearly the water you imagine it would.

I personally don't care for how Wikileaks editorializes. I don't care for how they've been irresponsible in leaking names of innocent civilians, names that came under death threats because of their negligence. When Assange was directly asked about how he failed to react civilian volunteer names that were threatened, he said it is an expens

You're assuming that Wikileaks is telling the truth and that Domscheit-Berg lied. You're stated reasoning behind that was anyone criticizing Wikileaks must be working for the CIA. I pointed out why that was faulty reasoning.

We don't know the facts of the matter. One side is lying. You've contended that no one is allowed to question Assange without being a government pawn. That makes you exceedingly objective.

"In (his) book Domscheit-Berg confesses to various acts of sabotage against the organization. The former WikiLeaks staffer admits to having damaged the site's primary submission system and stolen material," Hrafnsson's statement said.

Damaging the primary submission system could be a range of things, but given the accusation I'd say they sound more than suspiciously similar.

"The American intelligence community is an important market for our company," said General Dynamics spokesman Kendell Pease. "Over time, we have tailored our organization to deliver affordable, best-of-breed products and services to meet those agencies' unique requirements."

In September 2009, General Dynamics won a $10 million contract from the U.S. Special Operations Command's psychological operations unit to create Web sites to influence foreigners' views of U.S. policy. To do that,